Everyone Celaena Sardothien loves has been taken from her. But she’s at last returned to the empire—for vengeance, to rescue her once-glorious kingdom, and to confront the shadows of her past…

She has embraced her identity as Aelin Galathynius, Queen of Terrasen. But before she can reclaim her throne, she must fight.

She will fight for her cousin, a warrior prepared to die for her. She will fight for her friend, a young man trapped in an unspeakable prison. And she will fight for her people, enslaved to a brutal king and awaiting their lost queen’s triumphant return.

The fourth volume in the New York Times bestselling series continues Celaena’s epic journey and builds to a passionate, agonizing crescendo that might just shatter her world.

 

I must admit, I’ve gone back and forth on the rating of this book for a bit. We all know how I felt about Heir of Fire (read my review here) so I won’t rehash that too much here. Just know that Queen of Shadows was a step toward redemption for the series for me.

My initial reaction was 5 stars. This book was packed with action and even Manon’s chapters had me interested and involved this time. So much happened in this book that I felt myself constantly asking, “Why couldn’t SJM have just combined HoF and QoS?”

But there were a few things that I really didn’t like and have upset me quite a bit. I don’t like what’s being done to Chaol’s character. I’m not going to get spoilery here but let’s just say that I’m still firmly on ship Chaolaena. I know everyone has their panties in a bunch for Rowan – and I think he’s fine – but I don’t think it’s okay to practically erase all of the character development that has occurred for Chaol just because SJM has dreamed up a guy she thinks is hotter.

It gave me flashbacks of Gilmore Girls where they butchered Dean’s character just so that fans would be okay with Rory liking Jess (and yes, I liked Jess too, but only because the writers totally killed everything that was good about Dean in the first place – sound familiar, SJM?!).

Also, I was finding a few weird similarities between this book and aspects of the Fever Series by Karen Marie Moning. Granted they’re both stories about Fae so it might all be coincidences but Rowan started reminding me quite a bit of Barrons and I found that to be a bit unsettling.

So anyway – the bulk of this book was great. I loved the constant action and the fact that it was just far superior to Heir of Fire in every way. I think my favorite part of the story was Lysandra’s evolution and just her entire plot line in general.

 

The bottom portion of this review may contain some mild spoilers. 

 

I did think a few things happened too easily. There were some major deaths in this story and I thought those characters would put up more of a fight. In fact after the first one happened I actually said out loud, “That was it?” I just thought that those characters deserved more.

So all in all I’m looking forward to the next book, though I’m a little wary of getting too excited about it. I have a feeling it is going to be another “set-up” book that just gets everything in place for the final.

 

Are you caught up on this series? What do you think?